Last Friday, October 31st, was my 37th birthday. It turned out to be my best birthday yet!
Two offers
The night before my birthday, I received another job offer. This means I started the day with two offers in hand, from Dimdim and from Mzinga.
Patrick Moran (@patrickmoran ), CMO at Mzinga, made me an offer for a Web Director role. Mzinga has great technology and people and I could easily see myself working for Patrick. I even had the opportunity last week to meet with Barry Libert, Chairman, and Rick Fault , President & CEO. They both seem to work very well together. In the end, I called Patrick Friday morning to thank him for the offer, but to decline. I feel the new role at Dimdim is where I need to be right now. It was tough coming to my decision, the offer was competitive, the challenges interesting, and Mzinga has some great people.
Later that morning, I spoke with Steve Chazin, CMO of Dimdim to let him know I would like to be the next employee at Dimdim. I accepted the offer for the Community Manager role at Dimdim because it gives me the opportunity to focus my attention more directly on building relationships with customers and participating the broader online conversation. Dimdim also has an excellent team and I’m sure I will be constantly learning new things. Steve has a great set of experiences and insights. (see his blog, MarketingApple .) I’m looking forward to working directly with him.
We’ll be sorting out the start date this week, but it was very nice to accept the offer on my birthday.
Many good wishes
The web rocks! I’ve believe this for about 15 years, but I love being reminded. I’m a fairly social kind of person and over the past few years I’ve connected, reconnected, and met many new people through the web. This year I was amazed when birthday wishes came pouring in via a number of mediums. I received 4 traditional cards via postal mail. (I’ll be the first to admit I try hard to remember birthdays but I’m terrible at getting birthday cards in the mail, so I’m not complaining) Here’s the breakdown of my birthday wishes this year:
- 24 via Facebook
- 14 ecards/emails
- 6 over Geni
- 4 calls
- 5 via twitter
- 3 via IM
- 1 SMS
- 2 automated emails (from DCU and webmaster-talk.com, and the best part was they only wished me a happy birthday, no other messaging or ads)
A few people even wished me a happy birthday through more than one medium. For me, it doesn’t get any better than having people wish you a happy birthday from across the US, UK, Spain, and Germany.
Comments
8 responses to “Best birthday yet! Two job offers and many good wishes.”
Congratulations Kevin. I’m glad you’re able to find a job at a company that you’re excited about. It’s ironic that the day you left the world of job hunting I entered it. What strange times we are in.
Congratulations and Happy Birthday
Greg
Congratulations Kevin. I’m glad you’re able to find a job at a company that you’re excited about. It’s ironic that the day you left the world of job hunting I entered it. What strange times we are in.
Congratulations and Happy Birthday
Greg
Greg, thanks for the congrats. Sorry to hear about you entering the world of job hunting. What are you looking for?
Greg, thanks for the congrats. Sorry to hear about you entering the world of job hunting. What are you looking for?
In order of preference I would say that I would love a role as a product manager, customer experience manager, or as a project manager.
I think at this point in my career. I would be most interested in a role as a product manager. I’ve done a tremendous amount of work taking mediocre software and rebuilding it with better usability and more desirable features. I have a good sense how to gather market input, deliver improvements and how to market the features back to the users. I have basically spent the past two years at Ektron doing just that with their flagship content management system.
I’ve heard that many companies are developing a new position called experience manager. This position is keenly responsible for managing a customer’s overall interactions with the company with the product, customer service, sales, marketing, and so on. The goal of this position is to make sure that customer is presented with a unified and pleasurable experience when dealing with your company. In many ways it’s as if the company is hiring an advocate for its users to be tightly integrated with its own business model. This type of position is very interesting to me.
In any role, my strong suit is my ability to re-imagine product tasks and their interface using usability testing and then to redesign the product to be more usable and saleable.
Do you have any suggestions?
Greg
In order of preference I would say that I would love a role as a product manager, customer experience manager, or as a project manager.
I think at this point in my career. I would be most interested in a role as a product manager. I’ve done a tremendous amount of work taking mediocre software and rebuilding it with better usability and more desirable features. I have a good sense how to gather market input, deliver improvements and how to market the features back to the users. I have basically spent the past two years at Ektron doing just that with their flagship content management system.
I’ve heard that many companies are developing a new position called experience manager. This position is keenly responsible for managing a customer’s overall interactions with the company with the product, customer service, sales, marketing, and so on. The goal of this position is to make sure that customer is presented with a unified and pleasurable experience when dealing with your company. In many ways it’s as if the company is hiring an advocate for its users to be tightly integrated with its own business model. This type of position is very interesting to me.
In any role, my strong suit is my ability to re-imagine product tasks and their interface using usability testing and then to redesign the product to be more usable and saleable.
Do you have any suggestions?
Greg
Hey Greg, just came across this blog post from David Meerman Scott
http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/topics/08/downsized-fired-here-are-the-new-rules-of-finding-a-job/
Some great advice.
-k
Hey Greg, just came across this blog post from David Meerman Scott
http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/topics/08/downsized-fired-here-are-the-new-rules-of-finding-a-job/
Some great advice.
-k